


determined to succeed

by cosmogyral



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 16:52:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3657999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyral/pseuds/cosmogyral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra can see quite plainly that this is developing into one of their more childish arguments. She opens her mouth to inform them that she is leaving, and catches sight of the Inquisitor, who is grinning like a cat with cream in the corner. Cassandra folds her arms and raises an eyebrow. The Inquisitor grins wider.</p><p>"Stop that,” Cassandra orders her. "You look like a varghest."</p>
            </blockquote>





	determined to succeed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Thanks to my betas, and to my recip for her darling prompt. Hope this is something like what you wanted!

“Let’s try this one more time,” says Josephine, with her most patient voice. “You enter the room. Your aunt enters the room—thank you, Cullen—curtseys to the Inquisitor, curtseys to you; she presents her petition—”

“I tell her that we pay ambassadors to deal with self-important boot-lickers like her, and then I return to the training grounds,” Cassandra says.

Cullen, still trying to guess how to curtsey, winces.

“Your line is _Aunt Urraca. It is an honor,_ ” Josephine says. It’s been half an hour of this excruciating argument, and her voice is finally beginning to become audibly testy, instead of just patronizing. “Please, Seeker. We need her coin. Cullen, would you approach?”

“Aunt Urraca,” Cassandra says. “It is an—don’t touch me.” Cullen yanks his hand back. “An honor. Welcome to the Inquisition. What?” she demands, catching Josephine’s expression. “I did not hit her. I was barely even rude.”

“I tremble in my boots at the thought of you attempting to be rude,” Leliana says, from the corner.

“Oh, thank the Maker we have illuminating commentary like that,” Josephine snaps. “You’re worse than Vivienne. If you—”

Cassandra can see quite plainly that this is developing into one of their more childish arguments. She opens her mouth to inform them that she is leaving, and catches sight of the Inquisitor, who is grinning like a cat with cream in the corner. Cassandra folds her arms and raises an eyebrow. The Inquisitor grins wider.

"Stop that,” Cassandra orders her. "You look like a varghest."

Inquisitor Adaar, Herald of Andraste, light of the realms and hope of a million innocents, detaches herself from her leaning pole and comes over to Cassandra. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” she says. “Were you saying something important?”

Cassandra scowls. “Yes. I was telling you that I do not wish to be made a subject of fun.”

"--and if you think it is outside the Seeker's capacity to turn the Winter Palace into a bloodbath," Leliana is saying, "you have never--"

Adaar tucks her arm through Cassandra’s in a swift motion, before Cassandra can stiffen with affront, and maneuvers her adroitly past Cullen and—ducking—underneath Josephine’s line of fire, to the doors. “Well, the Maker says that lying is wrong,” she says, conscientious, “so I have to tell you that I was having tremendous fun already.”

“Of course you were.” The doors swing shut behind them. Leliana’s voice drops to a dull murmur. “You find me very amusing. So does everybody.”

“That’s not true. Most people find you terrifying,” Adaar says. She leans hard on the doors, a little guiltily, until they look like they may have stuck. Cassandra reaches for the handle to check, but the Inquisitor has already made a break for the next one. “Is it really so bad to try and greet your cousin?”

“My aunt. You have never met her,” Cassandra says. She summons the image of Aunt Urraca, the rings on each of her fingers, the habits of hatred etched next to her mouth, her bandy knees and the perverted emptiness of her blandishing smile. Also, that awful perfume, which makes Cassandra want to sneeze. She collapses into Josephine’s chair as she gropes for the salient detail. “She believes she is coming to cow me.”

“Ohhh.” Adaar is silent for a moment, shutting the second door. “Please don’t be angry—but that sounds very useful.”

From the chair, there’s hardly any view out the window. Perhaps Josephine Montilyet, with her impeccable posture and her half-inch of height on Cassandra, can see some birds to while away the hours, but Cassandra can see only patches of blue sky, and that may be the tinting of the glass. Not even to know what the weather is, four days of the week, and then to tell the Right Hand of the Divine to smile and make nice to Urraca Pentaghast!

 _That_ is a sulky thought, unbecoming to anyone, let alone a woman of seven and thirty. She forces herself to turn back to the Inquisitor, and incline her head. “Inquisitor,” she says, “ _you_ like this rot.”

“I don’t suppose anyone likes dealing with awful relations,” Adaar says. She’s still distracted. “But yes, I do. Then again, I was trained.” She makes a face. “Shall we go? They’ll be arguing about the Mire now.”

Cassandra gets to her feet. “I was not aware it was possible to have a difference of opinion about that place.”

“Certainly. They hate it in very different ways.” Adaar pushes open the door to the throne room, and Cassandra ducks under her arm, making a beeline for the garden, which is empty but for an undergardener. Seeing them approach, he decides to vanish. The wind picks up in Cassandra’s hair. “Josephine thinks that we’ve wasted enough time there already. Cullen thinks that’s all very well, if we didn’t need our men back. Leliana calls them both short-sighted. Then there’s usually a scuffle about whether leading an army improves one’s long view, and then if Cullen playing chess all the time counts as actually leading an army, and then he looks hurt, and Josephine has to pretend to be sorry. We’ve all been pent up in there too long.” She rubs at one forearm, her wide fingers running over the lines of muscle. Cassandra looks away. “Months too long, really.”

“You know them so well,” Cassandra says.

Adaar smiles. “You know your Templars that way.”

It’s true enough. Cassandra has to look away from the smile, as well. “I have never locked my Templars in the tavern to escape their squabbles.”

“I didn’t _lock them in_ ,” Adaar says, with lofty condescension. “The door doesn’t lock.”

"I would build a new wall around the room with my own hands if it would keep me out of it." The sky is not so clear as it looked through Josephine's window. There is fog gathering over the keep walls, dropping in thin fingers down on the wind, and Cassandra tips her face back to it.

“I think part of it is that you’re not as indecently fond of winning as the rest of us,” Adaar says, as though this comment makes sense.

“I’m sorry?”

“Politics,” Adaar says, which does not help. “It’s about winning. Except you’d rather not win, and simply get what you want.”

Cassandra considers this. “I certainly do not play games.”

“Right.” Adaar seems rather pleased. “And it isn’t an exercise of skill for you—at the moment,” pushing diplomacy beyond the bounds of truth, “so that you aren’t enjoying the practice. You’re just trapped, while we tell you to look friendly. Like those dracolisks in the stables."

“I was trained, too, you know,” Cassandra says. “By Aunt Urraca. _What_ a coincidence. Go here, Cassandra. Sit there, Cassandra. Let the maids braid your hair, Cassandra. Do not forget that you are the daughter of traitors, Cassandra.” She bats at the air. “It is not that I do not know the form.”

Adaar hums, dissatisfied. “I don’t know,” she says. “Technically I know how to sing.”

“Please do not cheer me up by demonstrating.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

It was canny of Adaar, Cassandra thinks, to take her out here. She feels clearer-headed already. Much less likely to throttle someone. She moves to speak her thought, realizes it has cast off its track; well, she'll trust Adaar to follow it. "Perhaps I could meet Urraca in the training grounds. Armed."

"We could move the throne into the courtyard, and see if it cuts down on the curtseying," Adaar agrees, and then, quite unexpectedly, curtseys herself, an ungraceful motion even in pants. She frowns. “Cullen’s better at that than I am.”

"Then bow."

Adaar, instead, sinks to one knee in front of Cassandra, her head dipping down till she comes up only to Cassandra’s chest. Cassandra puts out a compulsive hand, and then drops it as Adaar says, in her own comfortable tones, “My lady Cassandra. It has been too long.”

“I— No,” Cassandra says. “No, Urraca whines.”

“I thought if I whined you’d laugh,” Adaar explains. She has her head still bowed. The hair on the crown of her head moves just the same way as her horns do, thick and spiraling back.

Cassandra says, “I would not laugh at you.”

“Hmm. I’m not very good at imitations,” Adaar says. Inexplicably, she has flushed, that plum color running over her cheekbones. She tilts her head up. Cassandra can see her rueful smile. “Are you going to accept my audience? These trousers barely have knees.”

“Maker’s breath.” Cassandra steels herself, and puts out a hand. “Aunt. Please. Rise.”

“Of course, child,” Adaar says, ignoring Cassandra’s hand to lean heavily on her shoulder on her way off the ground. “You’ve grown a mile.”

“Not nearly so much as you have,“ Cassandra mutters. “The Inquisition welcomes you. It is an honor.”

“Oh, let alone the Inquisition for a moment,” Adaar says. “I’m here to see _you._ How have you been?”

“Leading a holy war,” Cassandra says, at a loss.

“Wonderful,” Adaar says, nodding heartily. “Wonderful. You know, Cassandra, I don’t know what your _awful_ uncle used to say, but _we_ in the cadet branch always thought that you would make something of yourself, and here you are! Why, to know that the Pentaghast name is so well-spoken of, even in these barbaric parts... It’s enough to warm a heart.”

“Is it?” Cassandra says. “I—”

“And _speaking_ of these barbaric parts,” Adaar says, smoothly, “I couldn’t help but notice from the reports that you’re all still riding Ferelden horses, of all things. I know how you felt about our home lines. I’ve brought you a charger!”

“ _What?_ ”

Adaar drops her raised hand. “She really has,” she confides. “Josephine thought it should come as a surprise, so that you’d look genuine.” She is flushing again. "I thought perhaps you'd like to look a little less genuine. You can close your mouth any time you want, you know."

“She brought me a _horse?_ ” Urraca had never ridden anything but her maid in her life. Cassandra hadn’t thought she knew there was such a thing as horseflesh, let alone that Cassandra had looked after her uncle’s mare and yearned. “Is there nothing she will not do for her special treatment?”

Adaar says, limpidly, “Don’t you _want_ a horse?”

Cassandra laughs, her hand flying up to cover it. “Damn you,” she says, and shoves the Inquisitor’s shoulder, which rolls over, Cassandra’s only warning before Adaar pulls one of her underhanded tricks and swivels round her. Cassandra wheels round in time to block Adaar’s open hand with two crossed arms. Adaar leans into her like the Bull, all of her weight going into Cassandra’s back foot, and Cassandra catches her eye and finds her moment and shifts her guard. Adaar, with a squawk like a wading bird, loses her balance completely and hits the grass.

“I think you just like me on the ground in front of you,” she says, rubbing her elbows.

“None of my cousins would ever say anything so improper,” Cassandra says, and grins, briefly and against her own will.

“Ha!” Adaar says. She beams up at Cassandra, grass stains on her official pants, her face wide with pleasure. She says, “I told you I like to win.”

“Aunt Urraca,” Cassandra says, taking her hand. “An honor. Welcome to the Inquisition.”

“Thank you,” Adaar says. She kisses it, and lets it drop. “The honor is mine.”


End file.
